[ryanackley]

When developing on a Microsoft stack with Visual Studio, I have always found SQL Server to be the most painless DB system. You can't beat the Visual Studio integration and tools. Also, their SQL Server drivers for .NET do a bunch of transparent optimizations like automatic connection pooling behind the scenes so you don't have to worry about this kind of thing.

OTOH, when not on a Microsoft stack, it has been a constant source of hard to track down problems and bugs. I remember trying to use Microsoft's JDBC driver a few years ago in a Java web app and running into all kinds of nasty and unbelievable bugs in the actual driver they shipped.